by Lisa Cach
“Gift?” She said the word as if it was a foreign concept.
“Don’t ask me what it is. I’m not telling.” He wasn’t sure she would have known what it was, even if he had told her. And truth be told, it was as much a gift for himself as for her, although he intended they should use it together.
“I need no gift.” She sounded as if she might not need it but certainly wanted it. The gleam in her eye spoke of tightly reined curiosity and greed. He was delighted.
“Sure you do. Every woman does. And you arranged for the logs and the ropes, and watched my back while I was down there. I couldn’t have dammed the spring without your help.”
He was getting wise to the ways of Alizon. If she needed a reason to be given a gift, a reason he would give her.
After spilling her heart about the day she had been given to the dragon, she had closed herself off and avoided talking with him. She reminded him of a wild animal, and instinct told him that the way to tame her was to let her tame herself: He would sit still and let her come back to him. Pushing would only scare her farther away. She kept up her porcupine quills because she was, at heart, frightened of him.
It was a truth of human nature he had learned coming up through the ranks of the CUW. Those who were sure of their place and of themselves had no need of posturing and back-stabbing. It was only those who felt their own vulnerability who behaved like sewer rats. A pissy attitude was a sure sign that someone was feeling scared and helpless.
Alizon was scared of him in the same way that men and women had been scared of each other for millennia, wanting one another and yet afraid of letting down the shields on fragile hearts.
So, he had gone about his business while talking about his family and his friends. He told anecdotes from his life, tailoring them to fit this medieval world. He asked nothing from her, not even that she listen.
She had gradually thawed, and started hanging around him, offering her own tales about the time she had lived in Markesew. She liked especially to speak of Emoni, and asked him over and over the same questions about her long-lost friend, as if through repetition she could gain some new crumb of information. She had started behaving like a friend.
He stood up and helped Alizon to her own feet. He couldn’t get enough of looking at her, now that the hood was gone. In the hood’s place he had the certainty that she would flee if stared at to keep his glances furtive. He liked it best when she was engaged in some task in the kitchen and he could watch her for minutes at a time without her knowing.
Sometimes she did catch him looking; then she would get either flustered or angry.
And sometimes he caught her looking. He would pretend not to notice.
“I may have arranged for the materials, but I still do not think they will do any good,” she said. “You have likely wasted your efforts here.”
“We’ll see.”
She gestured to the trapdoor. “Are you going to leave the ladder?”
“I’ll want to check the dam tomorrow. I doubt Belch will do anything to it if we leave it overnight.”
She shrugged and started up the tunnel. He followed, watching the sway of her hips and resisting the urge to squeeze her buttocks. Keeping his hands off her while he won her confidence was taking the patience of a saint.
And he wasn’t one.
While waiting for the logs and ropes this past week, he had spent most of his time working on the gift, chopping and hauling wood, weeding the gardens, cooking, and attending to personal hygiene. The personal hygiene and cooking took unholy amounts of time, but he couldn’t allow himself to stink with Alizon nearby, and even if he had trusted her cooking, he wouldn’t have been comfortable making her wait on him.
Besides, like tempting a wild bird into the hand with sunflower seeds, the simple meals he made lured Alizon to the kitchen table. She had started eating whatever he put together, and however basic the sandwich or omelette seemed to him, its novelty appealed to her.
He liked watching her eat. He liked the feeling that something he had done gave her pleasure, and liked the way she pulled bits out of her sandwich, tasted them, and put them back. He liked the darkness of her eyes, and the way they flashed at him over the top of her sandwich when she took a bite, like a hyena wary of a nearby vulture.
He liked the challenge of their encounters.
He liked her.
Alizon would never let anyone use her as a doormat. She would never cling, or look for others to solve her problems. She was a survivor, independent and proud, but best of all was the heart that beat beneath her dragon-scaled exterior. Again and again he found himself in awe of how she had saved so many young girls, and how despite the risk to herself she descended weekly to Belch’s lair to feed him.
Again and again, he found himself wanting to take the burden of the dragon from her, to set her free to live the life she deserved.
And again and again, as he lay in bed at night, his imaginings wandered to what it would be like to have her in his real life, living in his house, traveling with him from city to city, waking next to him in his bed every morning, her unshielded heart in her eyes. What might it be like, to be loved by a woman such as Alizon, and to love her in return?
What might it be like?
They came out into the kitchen, and he grabbed his usual buckets and scooped them full of hot mineral water.
“I do wish you would use the tub,” Alizon said. “It is indecent, your standing naked on the terrace to bathe.”
He grinned at her. “You’re the only one who might peek, and I wouldn’t mind if you did.” There was a big, heavy tub he could have used for his bath, but he found it more efficient to take the buckets out onto the terrace and give himself a scrub in the open, dumping water over his head to rinse. It was fast, though chilly.
“Marry! Please yourself, but I shall not be peeking!”
“Don’t go anywhere, and for heaven’s sake, don’t lock the door. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes with your gift.” She had a fondness for locking doors behind him and leaving him to knock and shout her name when he returned.
She was either paranoid about intruders, or she took some sort of sadistic pleasure in making him beg entrance again and again. What might it be like to have her in his real life, indeed!
She crossed her arms over her chest, apparently trying to look petulant and uninterested in the promised gift. She was a poor actress. “I won’t sit here waiting all day. I have things to do, you know!”
“Porridge to boil, hearths to scrub, yes, I will try not to keep you long from such joys.” He might have to dawdle at his bath, for her own good. Half the fun of a gift, after all, was the anticipation.
She followed him as he retreated into the corridor. “I do more than that with my time.”
“I should like to know what.”
“My tapestries. I weave.”
“Ah, yes, these tapestries you say you were trained to create. I have yet to see one,” he goaded.
“Mayhap one such as you would not appreciate it.”
“Mayhap you have none to show.” He suspected she wanted to be prodded into bringing one out. She was probably too proud to show him if it looked like her own idea, as if she was seeking approval or praise. “Are you coming with me, to scrub my back?” he asked as they reached the door to the terrace.
“Fie on you! Your thoughts follow but one course.”
“It is the curse of being a man. We know that women never dirty their minds with such thoughts.”
“By Saint Nicholas, we do not!”
“That is what I said. Now will you let me bathe, so that I may bring you your gift?”
“I am not keeping you.”
“No, of course you’re not. My apologies.” With a whisper of a laugh, he pulled open the door to the daylight and went out to take his bath. She was definitely starting to like him.
Alizon watched the door close behind George and felt an odd impatience that he should be out of her company, even for the spac
e of a quarter hour. These past few days she had had the strange sense that George was backing away from her, and that she was the one who was pursuing. She knew she was doing no such thing, and was keeping tight control over her impulses, and yet …
The closed door was a frustration, and she had half a mind to open it and continue their conversation.
She made a rude noise and threw up her hands.
She no longer knew if she was coming or going. There was the damming of the spring to worry over, and whether it might not do as George said and chill Belch to death. She did not know what to make of his promise of a gift, or of her own impulse to show him one of her tapestries. She had barely controlled the wild desire she had had, staring at his bare chest, to strip off her gown and slide her naked body down his slick and sweaty skin.
She was upside down and inside out. Mayhap she should go out there and bathe him, as he had dared, and see if it cleared up any of the confusion.
The noise of the bar being slid back on the door to the great hall saved her from acting on any such thoughts. She knew that someone had been listening, and knew as well what was coming next.
“Hurry, hurry, he is much too fast,” Joye said, opening the door a crack and then disappearing, running after the rest of virgins toward the door at the other end of the room, leaving Alizon to enter the hall on her own.
She tightened her lips into a hard line and barred the door behind her, watching the flying skirts and bouncing braids of racing girls. She wanted to forbid this spying upon George at his bath, but if she tried, no one would obey. Her authority would be irreparably undermined, for there was no force on earth that would keep the virgins from their daily dose of naked male flesh.
At least George had no idea of what happened each time he stripped off his clothes and reached for the soap. That was a minor mercy.
A dark little voice inside taunted her: It’s not his modesty you care about. You want to keep him all to yourself.
And what if she did? Surely it was a less sinful desire than one to share him would be.
She jogged after the virgins, toward the other wing of the castle. She had to be there, to keep them under control: It wasn’t that she wanted to spy on George herself, like a lecherous old spinster. By the rood, she had not sunk so low as that!
By the rood, she had not. Those long flanks and the dark hair at his groin need not be gazed upon, nor did the thick maleness that nestled upon it. The sculpted buttocks, the broad back with the healing slashes of Belch’s scales, the wide shoulders: She had no wish to stare and slobber over such a forbidden view. She had no interest in watching water sluice through his rich, heavy hair and down his body, caressing his skin like eager hands.
Up ahead, Braya lost her footing rushing around a corner. The virgins left their fallen friend and dashed onward, some leaping over her sprawled form. Alizon helped her up and was rewarded with a view of Braya’s back as she galloped on ahead.
By the time Alizon reached the long upstairs room that offered the best view of the terrace, the virgins had swathed their heads and faces in black cloths and were crouched as near as they dared to the windows. They had worked together to come up with the veil idea, having recognized that white faces were too easily seen at a window.
It was a good thing they hadn’t visited George in the night in such garb: He would have lost what wits he had left. Even in the dim light of this room they looked like headless corpses, with pale slits of eyes floating above.
She took a piece of black cloth and swathed her own face.
The bath began. The virgins watched in intense silence, with a concentration that was unnerving, and that made Alizon worry for George’s safety on the mount amid them. It was a wonder he could not feel their gazes upon his skin.
She had tried to get George to use the tub in the kitchen, where there would be privacy. She had done all that anyone could expect. If she herself took a small bit of pleasure from watching his bare skin gleam in the light of the setting sun, it should be considered her reward for keeping her hands and mouth off him these past days.
She still intended to use him to lose her virginity but hadn’t yet figured out exactly the right approach. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, or of what would happen. She was just cautious.
It was too bad that watching him only made her nighttime fantasies all the wilder, and the lust in her blood the stronger. She might do something rash.
Like lick those droplets off his body, running her tongue up his thigh, across his belly, over the planes of that delicious chest … She swallowed, her mouth watering. Then she would start over, on that bit of maleness that she unaccountably wished to feel in her mouth, somehow certain that it would feel silky and taste wonderful. Her naked breasts would brush his legs, and she would grip his buttocks in her hands …
Down on the terrace George toweled off and donned the shirt he had left to dry on the parapet earlier in the day. A sigh went through the room as he covered up, Alizon’s included. She tried to shake off the fantasies that belonged more to the night than to the day.
She watched him a moment longer, amused by his fastidiousness. He was always cleaning himself, his clothes, his dishes, or even his food. He behaved toward dirt the same way others behaved toward a leper’s sore: as if disease would come from touching it.
Alizon backed away from the window and removed her veil. She had to get back to the kitchen before he returned. She gestured for Greta to come with her, to bar the door.
“What do you think he is going to give you?” Greta asked as they hurried back through the castle.
“Some trinket, most likely.”
“I don’t know where he would have gotten one,” Greta said.
“Nor do I. Like as not he has found some bit of nothing in that pile of armor and polished it up.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
Alizon shrugged.
Greta lay her hand on Alizon’s arm, stopping her. “Why would he do such a thing?”
Alizon frowned at her. “I do not know. Who can say why he does anything?”
Greta kept looking at her, a strange tension in her features.
“What?”
“I know he was not truly attacking you on the floor of the kitchen.”
Alizon’s lips parted, but she was too surprised to speak.
“I didn’t think you’d want us all to see what was about to happen, so I hit him on the head.”
Alizon’s throat was dry. “Do … do the others know?”
“Some suspect you’ve been visiting his bed. Some are jealous and think you are being selfish by not sharing.” Greta smiled awkwardly, her harelip twisting aside. “Some think you would not let him so much as touch the hem of your gown.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think … it is curious that he wishes to give you a gift. And I think you have had a lighter step and more color in your cheeks than I have seen for many years.”
Alizon crossed her arms over her chest. “Which means nothing.”
“So you say. But what if he asks you to leave with him?”
“I would not go. My place is here.”
Greta’s eyes narrowed. “Even at the cost of losing him?”
Alizon matched Greta’s intensity with her own, staring her down. “What wouldn’t I do to keep us all together? What haven’t I done?”
Greta was stiff a moment longer, then suddenly her harsh expression collapsed. Her eyes filled with tears and she embraced Alizon, hugging her against her own quivering body. “I knew you wouldn’t leave us. I knew it.”
Alizon stood startled within Greta’s arms, and awkwardly patted her back. “Never, Greta. I would never leave you on your own.” She had forgotten, for a brief time, how much the virgins needed her. Her mind had been too caught up in George.
“I know, I know.”
She patted Greta once more, then stepped away, feeling the weight of responsibility settling again onto her shoulders, cold and hea
vy where once it had been a warm mantle. Whatever lightness there had been to her step would be gone now.
She forced a false cheeriness into her voice. “Quick, now, I have to get back to the kitchen before he returns. We don’t want him suspecting anything, do we?”
Greta sniffed and shook her head.
Alizon exited to the corridor, and listened for the sound of the other woman barring the door to the great hall behind her. The archway to the kitchen was across from her, doors to cellars on either side, the door to the terrace a dozen steps to the right.
She stood alone in the dark for several moments, aware of the doors all around her. To the virgins. To George. To the kitchen and Belch. Those doors awaited her choice, but with a heavy heart Alizon realized that whichever she reached for, the end would be the same: She could never leave the mount.
Her fortress had become her prison.
Chapter Twenty
The legs of the sofa made a hideous screeching as he dragged it across the terrace. It seemed to be protesting being born, and he could hardly blame it. It had to be the butt-ugliest sofa ever to grace the sight of man, uglier even than the furnishings to be found in a bachelor pad or a college student’s apartment.
It was so ugly, so misshapen and queerly fashioned, it could almost qualify as a piece of art. “Modern Primitive Sofa,” it might be called, and placed in the center of a white gallery floor.
Looks, however, were not the point. Comfort was. He had had enough of sitting on those hard, backless benches in the kitchen. He had cobbled this beauty together from cots, lumber from Milo, several lumpy mattresses, and rope to keep the mattresses in place and provide the illusion of cushions.
He dragged it through the doorway, bumping and scraping at the frame, and a moment later Alizon appeared in the archway to the kitchen, her mouth agape.
“Jesu mercy, what in the name of heaven is that?”
“A sofa, my darling. You’ll love it.”
“But what is it?”
She backed away as he dragged it through the arch, and then over to the central hearth. He dropped the end, then shoved the sofa into a better position, close enough to the hearth to be warm, and placed so that a sitter looked across the fire to the worktable.
